Dr Timothy Frankel

Dr. Timothy L. Frankel is a faculty member in the Department of Surgery at the University of Michigan. He earned his medical degree from George Washington University and completed a residency in General Surgery at the University of Michigan during which time he spent two years at the National Cancer Institute studying tumor immunology and genetic engineering. He developed techniques to genetically modify peripheral blood lymphocytes allowing them to more effectively target tumors for destruction. His work resulted in multiple publications and awards including the James Crudup Surgical Research Award.

After residency, he completed a two-year surgical oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and currently treats patients with cancers of the liver and pancreas. His current research focuses on novel methods to characterize the tumor immune microenvironment. Using a tyramide signal amplification, multiplexed immunophenotyping (MIP) technique his laboratory assigns both identity and location to individual cells, in situ, allowing for measurement of cellular interactions and distribution. This has allowed for better understanding of the impact of immunosuppressive elements within the microenvironment and improved prognostication in multiple malignancies.